Review: A Spool of Blue Thread by Anne Tyler

A Spool of Blue Thread
Publisher: Chatto & Windus/Vintage/Random House UK
Release date: 10 February 2015
Rating: ****
Back cover blurb: ‘It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon…’ This is the way Abby Whitshank always begins the story of how she and Red fell in love that day in July 1959. The whole family on the porch, relaxed, half-listening as their mother tells the same tale they have heard so many times before.  And yet this gathering is different. Abby and Red are getting older, and decisions must be made about how best to look after them and their beloved family home. They’ve all come, even Denny, who can usually be relied on only to please himself. From that porch we spool back through three generations of the Whitshanks, witnessing the events, secrets and unguarded moments that have come to define who and what they are. And while all families like to believe they are special, round that kitchen table over all those years we see played out the hopes and fears, the rivalries and tensions of families everywhere – the essential nature of family life.

I’ve been wanting to read this novel for some time now and am kind of glad that I waited until it was winter, as it is a lovely warming novel.

A Spool of Blue Thread is a novel about ordinary family life...

But of course there is nothing ordinary about family life, we are all in some way different from each other and Tyler explores this wonderfully.

A Spool of Blue Thread is the lovingly crafted tale of The Whitshank family.

Set in Baltimore, we are taken through the generations of the family at different stages of their lives, allowing us to see them as a whole picture.

Starting off with Abby and Red taking a call from their son Denny who announces that he is gay, we are then taken on a journey that some authors wouldn’t be able to manage, but Tyler is a master in the art of storytelling.

This novel is a slow burner, but it is beautifully written.

If you like fast paced thrillers (which I also love by the way..) then this may not be for you, but I would urge you to give it a chance.

It is a wonderful novel that deserves every accolade it has been presented with.

A Spool of Blue Thread is available now from Amazon online and all good book shops.

     Thank you to the publishers who approved my request via netgalley in exchange for an honest review.